New England station nets $4.8 million under online hammer

THE 414 ha ‘Oakholme’ grazing property located at 441 Streeters Rd, Ben Lomond NSW sold under the hammer after 47 years of ownership by the Melville family on Thursday morning for $4.8 million through Ray White Rural NSW co- director Andrew Starr.

'Oakholme' is considered a high yielding property , on top of the Great Dividing Range at 1400m above sea level.

After what Mr Starr said was an excellent campaign, the productive grazing property, which also comes with a four bedroom home, attracted seven registered bidders. With four active participants, the competitive online auction began with a $3 million starting bid and received a total of 17 bids.

“From this the property received both local and interstate interest throughout the campaign and all in all it was very strong all the way through with the quality of interest being very high,” he said.

“Buyers were really drawn in by the area, Ben Lomond is held in high regard for it’s elevation, rich basalt soils and high average annual rainfall which is a hard combination to find in the Australian landscape”.

With an average annual rainfall of approximately 1,000mm combined with the heavy basalt soils, gently undulating and highly arable terrain, Oakholme is regarded as one of New England's very best, located 28km to Guyra, 36km to Glen Innes and 64km to Armidale.

With online auctions now in their fourth week, the Rural NSW team are well-versed in the virtual space and Thursday’s auction marked the third sale under the online platform for the office.

“We are all very comfortable with the new online auction process and I think it’s important for all agents to become familiar with the platform in the current climate,” Mr Starr said.

“Once on-site and in room auction restrictions are lifted we will go back to the traditional methods but may also consider including online auction platforms as a two pronged offering if appropriate.”

On the back of a day that saw 100 per cent clearance rate for Rural offices, Ray White Group Rural CEO Stephen Nell said this clearly demonstrated that there was still confidence in agriculture, the agricultural space and the property space.

“People understand that there is a new way of doing things and there is still strong demand for property. Generally speaking any time in the past when there have been issues people are always inclined to go back to property,” Mr Nell said.